London, England
08:00 AM
While the others were away in Lesser Edale, Greg, Wes, Natalja and Simon remained at the rented mews house in London studying all the books and scrolls they had found. We determined the following:
The Egyptian scroll is spell instructions for Summon Bind Byakhee – it requires a special whistle.
The Arabic scrolls are also spell instructions for Fists of Yog Sothoth, Dread Curse of Azathoth and Create dust of Suleiman.
We have a book or set of scrolls Gavigan referred to in his notes as The G’Haarne Fragments. In addition, we also have the Book of Dyzan, which is yet to be deciphered.
However, none of us could read or translate these arcane texts so we don’t know any of their contents.
Simon and Wesley also looked at what Randolph shipping was trying to build with all these electrical parts but couldn’t make sense of it. Perhaps it was some kind of radio equipment. The inventories also evidenced lots of wires and generators so whatever apparatus they are constructing is needs a load of power.
Studying scrolls we had obtained from previous raids against cultists enabled Simon to learn Cloud Memory. This spell enables the caster to block a selected memory in a target. The target must be able to see and hear the caster. It costs 1d2 magic points and 1d6 magic.
In between our more esoteric studies, Greg made his usual surreptitious checks with Savoy Hotel where we had rooms. On Sunday 8th February 1921, the reception told him that both Barrington on Scotland Yard and also another policeman, Deputy Commissioner Stephens, are both looking for us.
On his way back, Greg also visited Mickey Mahoney of The Scoop at his Fleet Street office. Mickey was quite short with Greg. He told him that the “D” notice had scuppered any report being made on the Misr House incident. In fact, it prevented anything being published about it for at least the next 70 years. Mickey was very annoyed at losing the story. Greg tried to placate him by saying that his confederates were close to solving the mystery of the Edale beast very soon. However, either Greg’s misanthropic manner or the paucity of detail failed to win Mickey over so Greg left.
Actually, Greg felt he should be glad; the “D” notice stopped him reporting on the investigators activities, which meant he wasn’t a liability. If he wasn’t a liability, there was no need to fill him full of drugs, put him in a crate and send him to Tristan Da Cuhna in the South Atlantic.
All that took effort, which Greg really could not be bothered with.
He stomped back to the house annoyed that Mickey didn’t appreciate what a good thing the “D” notice was.
As he trudged along in the smelly gloom of a smoke filled peculiar London afternoon Greg remembered that Lloyds of London had left him a message too. He did an abrupt about turn and headed to the City of London. The clerk at Lloyds was only mildly disdainful of a nosey foreigner but had received a good fee so he was reasonably helpful. He told Greg that there was a boat berthed in Shanghai, registered in London. The boat was called The Dark Mistress. Its registered owner was a Mr Alfred Penhurst, address not held. Furthermore, he was informed that this was not a large vessel. More like an ocean-going motor yacht.
Greg returned to the mews house in uncharacteristic good humour. He had some useful information at last, quite the novelty.
Greg made a call to Deputy Commissioner Stephens. He agreed to meet a pub near Scotland Yard the next day. He hoped he wouldn’t have to kill him. Removing teeth and cutting off fingers was a tiresome business. The cadaver would make the carpetbag so unbelievably messy too; best not to think about it.
London, England
14:00 PM
Greg left an uneventful meeting with Stephens shadowed at a discreet distance by Natalja. Oddly, in addition to the doctor’s bag which he always carried, Greg also carried a large carpetbag in his other hand. When she had asked him what it was for he just smiled. Quite a horrible unsavoury smile, Natalja wasn’t entirely sure who was worse, the murderous cultists or the good doctor.
Before she could cogitate, further she spotted two men behind him. As Greg meandered back to the rented mews house, it became obvious that they were following him.
She took a more direct route and arrived at the Mews house before Greg, only to find that there were another two men watching the mews entrance. She made a subtle gesture with her hands and created a cloud of mist between her and the watchers enabling her to evade their sight.
Greg wanders into the mews headed for the house. Behind him, the two followers meet up with the two watchers. After a short conversation, they all approached our mews house.
In typically abrupt fashion, Greg dropped the carpetbag, then put his hand in his doctor’s bag promptly dropping that also. Now holding his sawn-off doubled barrelled large calibre shotgun, he pointed it menacingly at the four men. He said simply:
Gaidar: “Lie down, show me your identification or be killed, at this range I can hit you all!”
This isn’t the way British police were addressed, especially in London. They were momentarily dumb-founded. Then one of them produced a warrant card. While they all looked at Greg, Simon came out of the house unnoticed via a garage door. He was armed with his Elephant Gun. Natalja approached then from behind with her silenced .45. It was looking bad for the four police officers.
Unready to kill just yet, Simon tried to punch one of the men but his one eyed vision let him down. He swiped uselessly at thin air. Looking round, the nearest of the four men calmly turns to Natalja.
He said:
M.I.5: “Please Miss, don’t get involved there’s a good lass!”
Then he sees the pistol in her hand and stops. Greg snatched the warrant card of the man in front of him. It looked bona fide. It was very similar to one shown to him by Stephens and Barrington earlier.
He looked in their eyes, yawned, then lowered his gun. These were no cultists. He said to them:
Gaidar: “You’d better come inside. Oh and please stay away from the Lady or she will kill you.”
The police officer nods in Greg’s direction, then says:
M.I.5: “Do as he says Chambers, no need for any rough-housing”.
Covered by Natalja and Simon the four followed Greg inside.
The police officer explained that he was escorting 3 members of MI5, as they have no powers of arrest of their own. He said they were investigating a murderous conspiracy. They believed that Greg and his fellow investigators were guilty of the killings at Misr House.
He unpacked a briefcase and showed the investigators pictures of Gavigan and Tewfik al Said. He explained that the London authorities were building a case against the pair and had evidence of kidnap, murder and rape. In addition, they were investigating the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh.
They knew that the investigators were linked to strange events in Turkey a year earlier.
Then the police officer closed his file. He got up to leave explaining that his companions would stay and tell the investigators more. Simon and Natalja, impressed with his calm demeanour, allowed him to leave.
Another man spoke. He gave his name as Smith. He admitted that he could no longer arrest the investigators as the police officer had left. However, he could not allow all the weaponry displayed in the Mews house to be used any more. It must be crated securely then taken away.
When the investigators left the UK, it would be returned to them.
Greg asked brightly:
“What weapons do you mean?”
“Oh the Lewis gun by the widow, the water-cooled Maxim machine gun on the tripod in the hall, the two boxes of grenades by the sofa, the 8 Mexican army issue Mondragon rifles in the wardrobe, the flamethrower in the pantry, the 4 Thompson sub-machine guns on the bed, the 2 Greener Farr Killer extra large calibre shotguns on the kitchen table and variety of pistols and Trench guns in the garage. Did I miss anything?”
“Oh those. Very well but we’ll need some time to crate them all up.”
Smith then said that he was speaking off the record. The “D” notice was in place to prevent any reporting of the Misr house Incident for a minimum of 70 years. One couldn’t have the British public knowing that a death cult had existed in London and that they had killed dozens of people over a number of years in and around East London. He confirmed that he also knew of our activities in Scotland the previous year too.
While we could be incarcerated that would serve no purpose. However, he wanted us to leave as soon as possible. Obviously, we could not talk of these events to anyone else.
Greg asked how they had tracked us down. Greg thought he had been very careful renting the mews house in the name of a Mexican corporation.
However, Smith explained that Gavigan had called Barrington after the burglary at the Penhew Foundation in Tottenham Court Road. Gavigan had reported that earlier that day a Russian lady, fitting Natalja’s description and an American man had visited his offices. They were linked to a party of Americans who had recently arrived at the Savoy Hotel.
This party of Americans were the same people involved in strange incidents in Turkey, Mesopotamia and Scotland the previous year.
Some old-fashioned police work and interviews of cabbies had eventually led them to a landlord in Mayfair who had rented a large house to various Americans and other foreigners at an exorbitant rent.
The trio leave. They later send a truck to collect all our crated weaponry.
Later that day the other four arrive from Lesser Edale.
Over the next couple of days Tommy Hays of Special branch and various other police officers interview us both at Police Stations and at the House.
Finally, on Friday 13th we are told we can leave. We are given a number to call if we should ever arrive in the UK again. All our crated weaponry is returned to us at our point of departure.
Simon, Trixie and Gupta return to New York in the plane flying via Scotland Iceland and Canada over five days.
Trent, Greg, Joe and Wesley take a boat in 4 days.
